The Rise of the Fortress Continent

[furtherfield]

The Rise of the Fortress Continent

Well, it could have been true.
That's what Senator Hillary Clinton had to say after finding out that five
Pakistani men did not actually sneak into the United States through Canada
so they could blow up New York on New Year's Eve. Because they were never in
the United States at all, and they weren't terrorists, and the whole thing
was dreamed up by a man who forges passports for a living.

At the height of the search for the professional liar's imaginary
nonterrorists, Clinton blamed Canada and its "unpatrolled, unsupervised"
border. But even when the hoax came to light, she didn't rescind the
accusation: Because the Canadian border is so porous, she reasoned, "this
hoax seemed all too believable."

It was, in other words, a useful hoax, helping US citizens to see how unsafe
they really are. And that is useful, especially if you are among the growing
number of free-market economists, politicians and military strategists
pushing for the creation of "Fortress NAFTA," a continental security
perimeter stretching from Mexico's southern border to Canada's northern one.

A fortress continent is a bloc of nations that joins forces to extract
favorable trade terms from other countries--while patrolling their shared
external borders to keep people from those countries out. But if a continent
is serious about being a fortress, it also has to invite one or two poor
countries within its walls, because somebody has to do the dirty work and
heavy lifting.

http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20030203&s=klein